The invention relates to electronic apparatuses including but not limited to radio communication apparatuses, and more particularly to the operation of multiple apparatuses whose concurrent operation creates the potential of one interfering with the other.
In the past few decades, progress in radio and Very Large Scale Integrated circuit (VLSI) technology has fostered widespread use of radio communications in consumer applications. Portable devices, such as mobile radio communication devices, can now be produced having acceptable cost, size and power consumption. After the worldwide success of mobile telephony in licensed bands, capacity limitations and huge license fees have spurred an interest in radio applications operating in the unlicensed bands. For the past few years, systems such as Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) operating in accordance with the IEEE 802.11 standards (commercialized under the name “WiFi”) and Wireless Personal Area Networks operating in accordance with the Bluetooth standards (IEEE 802.15 standards) have been increasingly deployed in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, Medical (ISM) frequency band. Other radio technology, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment (operating at 1.57542 GHz and 1.2276 GHz) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNAS) equipment (operating at approximately 1.602 GHz and 1.246 GHz), are now also commonly in use.
As more and more communications systems are integrated into a single device, such as a mobile terminal of some sort, the probability that systems will interfere with one another increases. In order to achieve seemingly simultaneous operation without significant user impact, the interfering systems perform time multiplexing, by which they take turns utilizing the radio spectrum in order to avoid having one system's operation interfere with that of another. This calls for some exchange of state information between the potentially interfering systems. In many instances, one of the communication systems will have priority over the other. The system having higher priority is herein referred to as the Primary communication system (or more generically the Primary apparatus, since the various inventive aspects are not limited to only communication systems). The system having the lower priority is herein referred to as the Secondary communication system (or more generically, the Secondary apparatus, since the various inventive aspects are not limited to only communication systems). The principle of operation between Primary and Secondary communication systems is that the Primary communication system's operation can take priority over that of the Secondary communication system unless this would cause a connection loss on the Secondary communication system.
Examples of such communication systems are:                Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) B7/B40 (Primary) communications equipment multiplexing with Wireless LAN communications equipment (Secondary)        3GPP LTE B7/B40 communications equipment (Primary) multiplexing with Bluetooth communications equipment (Secondary)        3GPP LTE B7/B40 communications equipment (Primary) multiplexing with GPS/GNSS radio navigation equipment (Secondary)        
Conventional strategies for coordinating operations between Primary and Secondary equipment are characterized by one or more drawbacks such as:                a requirement for complex signaling between Primary and Secondary communications equipment.        a requirement for alignment/standardization of the interface protocol to be used between the Primary and Secondary equipment. (Such alignment/standardization may be difficult to achieve because the several systems may be designed by groups that are completely independent of one another.)        cooperative behavior by one of the systems that is reactive to what the other one is doing, thereby creating inefficiencies in resource utilization (i.e., use of spectral and/or time resources).        
It is therefore desirable to provide one or more mechanisms whereby interfering communications systems, and more generally any interfering apparatuses, can cooperate with one another so as to avoid having one interfere with the other, while avoiding one or more of the drawbacks associated with conventional strategies.